FIELD FLOWER S.

65

FIELD FLOWERS.

YE field flowers! the gardens eclipse you, 'tis true, Yet, wildings of Nature, I doat upon you,

For ye waft me to summers of old,

When the earth teemed around me with fairy delight,

And when daisies and buttercups gladdened my

sight,

Like treasures of silver and gold.

I love you for lulling me back into dreams

Of the blue Highland mountains and echoing streams,

And of birchen glades breathing their balm, While the deer was seen glancing in sunshine

remote,

And the deep mellow crush of the wood-pigeon's

note

Made music that sweetened the calm.

Not a pastoral song has a pleasanter tune

Than ye speak to my heart, little wildings of June: Of old ruinous castles ye tell,

9

66

FIELD FLOWERS.

Where I thought it delightful your beauties to find, When the magic of Nature first breathed on my mind,

And your blossoms were part of her spell.

Even now what affections the violet awakes;
What loved little islands, twice seen in their lakes,
Can the wild water-lily restore;

What landscapes I read in the primrose's looks,
And what pictures of pebbled and minnowy brooks,
In the vetches that tangled their shore!

Earth's cultureless buds, to my heart ye were dear, Ere the fever of passion, or ague of fear,

Had scathed my existence's bloom;

Once I welcome you more, in life's passionless

stage,

With the visions of youth to revisit my age,

And I wish you to grow on my tomb.

CAMPBELL

OCTOBER TWILIGHT.

67

OCTOBER TWILIGHT.

ОH mute among the months, October, thou,
Like a hot reaper when the sun goes down,
Reposing in the twilight of the year!

Is yon the silver glitter of thy scythe

Drawn thread-like on the west? September comes
Humming those waifs of song June's choral days
Left in the forest, but thy tuneless lips
Breathe only a pervading haze, that seems
Visible silence, and thy Sabbath face

Scares swart November, from yon northern hills
Foreboding like a raven. Yellow ferns

Make thee a couch; thou sittest listless there,
Plucking red leaves for idleness; full streams
Coil to thy feet, where fawns that come at noon
Drink with upglancing eyes.

Upon this knoll,

Studded with long-stemmed maples, ever first
To take the breeze, I have lain summer hours,
Seeing the blue sky only, and the light
Shifting from leaf to leaf. Tree-top and trunk
Now lift so steadily, the airiest spray

Seems painted on the azure. Evening comes

68

OCTOBER TWILIGHT.

Up from the valley; overlapping hills,
Tipped by the sunset, burn like funeral lamps
For the dead day; no pomp of tinsel clouds
Breaks the pure hyaline the mountains gird—
A gem without a flaw-but sharply drawn
On its transparent edge, a single tree,
That has cast down its drapery of leaves,

Stands like an athlete with broad arms outstretched,

As if to keep November's winds at bay.

Below, on poised wings, a hovering mist

Follows the course of streams; the air grows

Over the dells.

thick

Mark how the wind, like one That gathers simples, flits from herb to herb, Through the damp valley, muttering the while Low incantations! From the wooded lanes Loiters a bell's dull tinkle, keeping time To the slow tread of kine; and I can see By the rude trough the waters overbrim The unyoked oxen gathered; some, athirst, Stoop drinking steadily, and some have linked Their horns in playful war. Roads climb the hills, Divide the forests, and break off, abrupt,

At the horizon; hither, from below

There comes a sound of lumbering, jarring wheels.